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Happy Thanksgiving!

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Thursday, November 24th, 2011

They’re back! Well, maybe not the same individuals. Turkeys only live in the wild for three or four years. And the last time we had turkeys on our deck scarfing birdseed out of my feeders was five or six years ago.

That last time was in the spring when a small flock showed up every morning and hung around for a week or so. They caused quite a stir in the neighborhood before wandering down the river to a yard where the owner put out large bowls of dog kibble for them to feast on every day.

Then a neighbor called animal services because she was afraid that her dog would get maimed by the turkeys as it challenged them for the dog food. As we all know, there are wild turkeys, and there are real TURKEYS.

Those wild turkeys were quickly rounded up and, I hope, set free in a forest somewhere outside the city.

My yard is no forest but it’s a pretty attractive place for wild turkeys. In addition to the birdseed, there are plenty of acorns, some berry bushes, slugs and grubs in the garden, probably an amphibian or two – regular staples in a turkey’s diet.

In the sunlight, turkeys are quite spectacular looking. The subspecies found here is the Eastern variety (Meleagris gallopavo silvestris). Granted their heads look like they got too close to a power mower that shaved all the feathers off and left them with a blue, purple and red scar. But their feathers have an iridescent quality on a warm brown background. And the tips of their tail-feathers are yellow-bronze in color with a band of purple-black just before the ends. I can see why some First Nation peoples used them in their ceremonial headdresses.

Our Canadian Thanksgiving was over a month ago; so I don’t think the turkeys took refuge in my yard to escape the holiday-meal hunters. I hope they stick around. It’s amusing to see them stretch for their breakfast every morning.

No collection of purchased objects, no matter how expensive or exquisite, can match the pleasure of finding a wild animal unexpectedly appearing in your life.

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Bumble Bees

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Thursday, November 17th, 2011

American Bumble Bee

As I was sweeping my back patio this week, I found a dead and desiccated bumblebee. Since I’m no entomologist, I have no idea whether it was male or female. I hope it was a male.

Unlike honey bees – which hive together in large numbers over the winter, bumble bees rely solely on their queen bees for the propagation of their colonies. The workers and drones all die off each fall. The queen bee spends the winter alone in the ground or in some other warm place.

When I first came to Manitoba, I was delighted to find bumble bees here because I thought the winters might be too cold for their survival. But they are hardy critters; they live as far north as the Arctic Circle. They’re found on Ellesmere Island, in fact, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. They’re especially familiar on the prairies and mountain meadows.

Like most other kids, I loved finding bumble bees when I was a kid. Back in the days when yellow and black were the colors of warning signs rather than florescent lime green, bumble bees seemed to be equipped with their own furry warning coats.

With their deep, rumbling buzz, their chubby bodies, and seemingly undersized wings, they were not only noticeable, they were the easiest flying insects to catch. I regret to admit that many a bee died in a Mason jar with a nail-punctured lid while in my youthful custody.

Nowadays, they too are in serious decline. A University of Illinois researcher, Sydney Cameron, did a study of eight of the fifty species of US bumblebees a couple of years ago. Four of the eight are in serious decline. A 96% decline.

Kids and I aren’t the only ones who’ll miss them. Since they pollinate tomatoes, cranberries, blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, and apples, we all should take heed of their possible demise.

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Crows

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Friday, October 21st, 2011

At first I thought they were mobbing a Great Horned Owl. Or maybe a rare migrant owl that made the mistake of settling down for the day in their favorite roosting spot. Crows can raise an almighty racket when there’s an owl around.

I knew right where they were – two and a half blocks away in a park where they often congregated for the night, but noisy enough to be audible even at that distance. So I went back inside to retrieve my binoculars to search for whatever was getting their dander up.

As I walked to the park, I couldn’t see how many were flying in from other directions. But wave after wave of crows approached from the south. They just kept coming and coming — in flocks of between 20 and 60 birds. Eventually the crows I counted totaled between 500 and 600.

As there was already a fierce clamor in the park when I started counting, the number was clearly more substantial — and positively Hitchcockian in its scariness. Upwards of a thousand, I’d guess-timate.

And not an owl to be found. The crows were simply cawing to each other, excited probably at the prospect of another collective migration to the south.
The next night the very same thing happened. Just before dusk with the sky still blue and the aspen leaves a bright yellow, they once again came from all over to gather and amass, gather and amass.

And then, overnight, they were gone.

I’d never before seen a massing quite like it. Certainly not in my neighborhood. What an immense, noisy bunch!

If a flock of them is called “a murder of crows”, this was “a genocide” of them!

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Tiger Salamander

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Thursday, October 13th, 2011

Manitoba’s weather can change dramatically in a matter of hours. Thursday it was clear, sunny and hot. Record-breakingly hot. 31.1 degrees Celsius (about 88 degrees Fahrenheit) – the hottest October day ever. On Saturday we were walking the dikes of Whitewater Lake in mitts, toques, and winter jackets, wondering where the sun and warmth had gone.

We’d car-pooled there to check on the migrating waterfowl, and we were all nervous the change in the weather would chase them all away. But the place was still teeming with ducks, geese, shorebirds, and even egrets.

The change in the weather did catch one thing by surprise, however. We found a Tiger Salamander (Abystoma tigrinum) laying on a path, evidently waiting for the return of the sun. It was very lethargic and cold to the touch.

Tiger Salamanders are usually pretty secretive. This one had probably emerged from its burrow during the warm night in search of its usual diet of insects and worms and got caught off-guard when the cold front moved in.

Although Tiger Salamanders can have brilliant yellow splotches or stripes on a dark brown, black or green base (like a tiger), this was uniformly dark greenish-brown and had almost no markings at all. It was curled up in a ball, its chunky body, ten-inch length, and thick tail entirely disguised. Half our group passed by it unnoticed, thinking it was black bear scat.

At Whitewater Lake Tiger Salamanders are at the northern edge of their Manitoba range. It’s amazing that these amphibians can survive here. The lake in some drought years can shrink to almost nothing, and waterfowl can die of botulism during those years. Somehow the hardy Tiger Salamanders can adapt pretty well to dry conditions.

Adapting to a dramatic change in the Manitoba weather is an entirely different proposition.

Photos by: Stuart Oikawa

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Woolly Bears

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Thursday, October 6th, 2011

A clear, blue sky. The landscape softened by leaves and grasses turning from green to yellow and brown. The pleasant rustle of downed leaves underfoot. A perfect day to head to Oak Hammock Marsh.

At this time of year The Marsh proves why it’s an IBA (Important Bird Area). Hundreds of shore birds, thousands of ducks, and tens of thousands of geese stop here in migration every day.

As I walked a path to get the sun behind me, I almost stepped on a Woolly Bear (Pyrrharctic Isabella). It caused an intense flashback.

Thirty years ago I strapped my two young daughters into their car seats and took them to The Marsh to show them the wonders of a Manitoba waterfowl migration.

The sky then was dark with geese, and their plaintive honking could be heard almost a kilometer away. I instructed my girls on the differences between the varieties of ducks and geese. I pointed out how geese wiffle down onto the water. I showed them the dabbling ducks and the diving grebes, and I asked them to count the seconds the grebes were underwater. The girls couldn’t have been less interested.

What fascinated them were the Woolly Bears. While I was gazing up, the girls were staring down at the little black and copper caterpillars (also known elsewhere as Woolly Worms, Fuzzy Bears, and Hedgehog Caterpillars).

I didn’t know much about caterpillars then, but I decided to make it a teaching moment anyways – even though what I told them was dead wrong.

The Woolly Bears, I said, were larvae that would turn into wondrous butterflies in the spring. In fact, they become orangey-yellow Tiger Moths. And I indicated that you could tell from their colors whether the winter would be warm or cold; the blacker they are, the longer and colder the winter will be. In fact, the coloration of the 13 segments of the Woolly Bears is the result of their age and feeding habits.

For the rest of our time there I looked at birds, and my daughters searched for more caterpillars.

I didn’t realize ‘til we got home that they were not just searching, they were collecting. They were hoping to hide the Woolly Bears so that in spring their bedrooms would be full of “flutterflies”.

Their seatbelts had actually mashed most of the larvae (at least a dozen each) in their jacket pockets. Icky, greenish goo stained, those jackets.

We only saved a few, putting them outside in the grass and hoping their natural cryoprotectant (anti-freeze) would help them survive ‘til spring.

By Spring my daughters had forgotten their precious Woolly Bears.

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Hawk vs. Flicker

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Wednesday, September 28th, 2011

Birds

It took me far too long to finish rebuilding my deck. But it was unexpectedly warm and sunny on Sunday. So, I lollygagged while replacing the joists and the floorboards. It was too nice to work hard.

In the middle of the afternoon a couple of flickers looped into my backyard and began searching for ants and grubs. They provided a pleasant distraction. Until….

In a flash an immature Cooper’s Hawk swooped in and struck one of them. It tore the poor bird apart in short order, scattering feathers in a small circle and feasting on its flesh. I didn’t intrude (it would have been too late anyways), content to watch what Tennyson called “Nature, red in tooth and claw” – or in this case “red in beak and talon.”

Flickers are easy targets. They’re big and colorful, they’re rather slow, and they sit out in the middle of open fields as if they have a big target on their backs. I’ve seen the remnants of quite a few of them over the years in a nearby park, where they’ve nested virtually side by side with Cooper’s Hawks. Symbiosis in action.

Flickers are such easy prey that juvenile Sharp-shinned Hawks will practice taking them down even though the flickers are too big to catch and eat. The sharpies will just dive bomb them, spook them a bit, and probably fly off chuckling to themselves.

It got me thinking about bird migration. I’ve heard that Northern Saw-whet Owls will move along with the Hermit Thrushes as they migrate south, following the food. I wonder if Coops follow flickers. I hope not.

Even though I can see over a hundred flickers a day at this time of year, it seems that these are one of the species that aren’t as plentiful as they once were. And Cooper’s Hawks are more abundant. I don’t like those odds.

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So Good to See You, My Deer!

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Wednesday, September 21st, 2011

A dangerous new vandal has started to make his/her presence known in my neighborhood. This person is probably different from the weirdo who sneaks around at night with a pruning shears and randomly cuts branches off trees. In the past couple of weeks, stop signs are being toppled or stolen.

I live along a half-mile stretch of a dead-straight residential street that is a shortcut for a housing development nearby. Even with the stop signs, this street can be a drag strip. Without them, speedsters drool with pleasure.

The kids that go to the school at the end of the straightaway are especially endangered. But so too are the three deer (a doe and two fawns) that I look forward to seeing every morning. (My dog Buddy doesn’t quite know what to make of them.)

The deer come up from the bush along the riverbank, cross the street and head for bird feeders and flower gardens in the neighborhood, including mine. Winnipeg is a large, modern city of over 750,000 people. It prides itself on its many parks and urban forests. As it turns out, these parks and forests are home to at least 1,000 white-tailed deer. Those numbers must be increasing because “my” deer are new to this area.

Statistics show that almost 500 vehicles collide with deer in the city every year. My deer almost became a statistic this week.

My deer are creatures of habit. They come up from the river and cross the road at almost the same time every morning: about 6:15 am. A week or so ago, they crossed in sunlight. As we lose about two and a half minutes of sunlight every morning, this week they have been crossing in the dark. They are virtually invisible.

The three deer started to cross the road just as two dragsters raced side-by-side down the two-lane street. The deer could not gain traction on the road as they scrambled to get out of the way. The cars never slowed down. No brake lights flashed.

One fawn got clipped on the back leg and was flung onto the grass. The other one and its mother were unscathed.
Before I got to it, it rose gingerly to its feet and wobbled unsteadily into the trees.

Buddy and I made sure to be out at the deer-crossing spot at the right time the next morning. Sure enough, all three deer were there, seemingly none the worse for wear. I saluted them with a cheery: “So good to see you, my deer.”

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Invasion of the Grackles

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Thursday, September 15th, 2011

My yard was overrun by Grackles this morning. Scores of them, perhaps 80 or so. It happens every year at this time. They arrive, scour the lawn for grubs and other grackle delicacies, and move on en masse. I have no idea how they get together, where they come from, or which one decides the yards to invade and when.

Some people consider grackles to be attractive birds. And they are in a way. With their iridescent blue-purple sheen, blazing yellow eyes and longish, vee-shaped tail, they are distinctive.

But they were NOT attractive to my mother. In fact, she HATED grackles with a rare fury. The only time I ever heard her curse was when she snapped: “those damn grackles!” She hated them so much she had my father chop down two perfectly good, mature, blue spruce trees to spite them.

Grackles are not musically gifted. The noises they make are among the most grating of any bird. Their raspy squawks sound like iron train wheels on rusty rails. It’s hard to call these noises “songs”. The birds sound like they’re being throttled.

The sound of one grackle can be annoying. Many grackles can make a deeply religious woman curse. And you rarely find just one grackle. Grackles are social nesters, and for many years several couples took up residence in our spruce trees. They woke us in the morning, squawked all day, and kept us awake at night.

To make matters worse, the grackle babies, like many birds, created mucous packages for their excretions – called fecal sacs. Their neat-freak parents would remove these sacs from the nest, fly to a convenient body of water and drop them in. Our family wading pool was a favorite drop-off target.

My mom put up with all this until late one summer when more than 100 grackles showed up on our lawn.
To her this invasion was the last straw, like a scene from Hitchcock’s The Birds. She blamed the spruce trees and demanded that my father get rid of them. He happily obliged.

My mom wasn’t the only person to hate grackles. If you Google “Getting rid of grackles,” you’ll find 116,00 results. Turns out we were lucky. In the south thousands of over-wintering grackles can invade your yard. Those damn grackles!

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The Three Bears

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Friday, August 26th, 2011

Once upon a time there were three black bears who lived on the edge of the boreal forest near Lake Winnipeg in Manitoba.

Correction: it wasn’t once upon a time; it was actually just a week or so ago. Being modern bears, they likely weren’t a family. And they didn’t have an actual house with furniture, and they didn’t leave that house while their porridge was cooling.

It’s been a very hot and exceedingly dry summer in Manitoba. So, the bears could not rely on the berry crop. There weren’t enough to even keep the birds happy, much less the bears. They had to go in search of food outside their familiar woods.

Their noses led them to Grand Beach, one of the top ten sand beaches in North America. Because it was such a hot and dry summer, hardly a mosquito could be found there. This drew hundreds of sun-lovers, beachcombers, and swimmers to the beach. Their fast-food and garbage attracted the bears.

The first one, a great, huge bear, showed up on a Thursday. It scared a lot of bathers, except for one woman. Let’s call her Goldilocks. Unlike the original, this Goldilocks decided to chase the bear in her car. The bear panicked and climbed a tree near the beach. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police came and “had to” shoot it because it was agitated. Perhaps they should have shot Goldilocks too.

The next one, a middle-sized bear, showed up the following Monday. Attracted by the smell of cooking fat and discarded French fries, it got between the bathers and their cars. Conservation officers were forced to put it down. Simply darting it with a tranquilizer was not an option. Too many people nearby.

Later that day a small, wee bear arrived on the beach. It met with the same sad fate. Ka-blam!

Modern bears can’t talk the way they do in fairy tales. They can’t say: “Someone’s swimming on my beach” to warn other bears away. They don’t stand a chance when people’s right to suntan and swim unimpeded trumps their need to eat.

Sorry, Disney. Fairy tales don’t always come true.

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Looking Back at a Forward Thinking Man

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Thursday, August 11th, 2011


In 1876 George Bird Grinnell turned down an invitation by General George Armstrong Custer to accompany his troops as a scientist in the exploration of the Big Horn Mountains in the Dakota Territories. Grinnell refused; he was more interested in working on his Yale PhD thesis on the Geococcyx californianus, known to us commoners as the Roadrunner.

Had Grinnell gone along with Custer he would certainly have been a casualty at Custer’s Last Stand, and we might not now have the vast number of Audubon chapters (over 600) we have today – 125 years later.

Six years after the Battle of Little Big Horn, Grinnell became editor of Forest and Stream, a sportsman’s magazine devoted to hunting and fishing. Under him it became more than a mere shoot, hook, and kill publication. Outraged at the wholesale slaughter of animals and birds for mere sport and for fashion accessories, Grinnell used his position to editorialize against exploiters and “game hogs”.

In the February 11, 1886 issue of Forest and Stream Grinnell urged people to join an organization he was just beginning. Educated as a boy in New York City by Lucy Audubon, widow of the great bird artist John James Audubon, Grinnell called his new operation the Audubon Society. Within a year he had 39,000 members.

The society had no membership restrictions, no dues, no lawsuits, no lobbyists. All you had to do was promise to prevent the killing of wild, non-game birds, to stop the destruction of all bird eggs and nests, and to not wear bird feathers as ornaments or dress-trimming.

That same year, as a founding member of the American Ornithologists’ Union, Grinnell helped frame and issue a bulletin that contained “one of the most important documents in the history of wildlife conservation.”

In February 1887 Grinnell spun off a magazine especially for his new “save-the-birds” society – The Audubon Magazine. But response to the society and the magazine was so overwhelming that Grinnell and his meager staff could not handle the workload. In December 1888, The Audubon Magazine ceased publication and the society ended operations. It wasn’t until 1896 that a new Audubon Society formed in Massachusetts.

Grinnell continued as an activist and writer, helping to preserve Yellowstone as a park, espousing Indian causes, and railing against the slaughter of elk, antelope, buffalo, and deer.

In 1925 he was awarded the Roosevelt Medal for Distinguished Service. The citation read: “Few have done so much as you, and none done more, to preserve vast areas of picturesque wilderness for the eyes of posterity in the simple majesty in which you and your fellow pioneers first beheld it.”

In the next year, the 125th anniversary of the first Audubon Magazine, we’ll hear a lot about the man it’s named for. I hope we also acknowledge its forward-thinking founder, George Grinnell, the man with the premonitory middle name – Bird.

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